| Vampire Weekend – I Think Ur a Contra Lyrics | 2 years ago |
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I think this might be about the same relationship as the one in 'Taxi Cab'. (This is the 2nd half of my comment on that song, so maybe check out the rest on there if you're interested in this.) In both songs he is making a personal relationship about big political things and screwing it up as a result. I think this may well be autobiographical: Ezra Keonig went to an elite Ivy League university (Cornell) but was from a modest background himself, becoming a school teacher after graduation until his band took off. Cornell is just the sort of place where he could have met and dated a girl who was from a much richer background than him, and be introduced to that world by her. And being highly educated but emotionally inexperienced at that stage of his life, it would have been easy for him to project the big political issues he'd learned about onto personal relationships where they didn't belong, and get preachy. There's also of course, a reference throughout the album that neatly combines issues of social class with rock&roll in a way that no doubt really appealed to Ezra - the British band The Clash. Big in the late 1970s & early 1980s, this band was all about being cool and the being on the side of the working class fighting The Establishment, at a time of huge class conflict in Britain (with the Winter of Discontent & the rise of Thatcherism). However, in reality the band's frontman Joe Strummer was far from the working class rebel he presented himself as, being the son of a diplomat (or a "Diplomat's Son"). The Clash released an album called 'Sandinista!' in 1980, named after the Marxist rebels who had recently overthrown the conservative Samoza dictatorship in Nicaragua at the time and were being fought by the CIA-funded 'Contras'. This was exactly the sort of struggle between cool leftist rebels and right wing forces of class disparity and unfairness that appealed to guys like Strummer, determined as he was to run away from his own rather elite background. So when Ezra's younger self accuses the girl in the song of being a 'Contra' he's dismissing her as a creature of privilege, who's content to support an unfair status quo that benefits her. Her desire for "Rock and roll, complete control" (another Clash song) is invalidated by her conservative desire for "good schools and friends with pools". Again he is being posey and judgey, and slotting a person he has a deep personal connection with into a simplistic political position. Only later, older and wiser, does he realise how dumb he was: people don't fit into neat boxes, part of one "side" or the other like some far off civil war, and he was wrong to try to force her to "choose between two" when really he "just wanted [her]". While the songs are regretful, the tone isn't too self-flagellating: Ezra is looking back, but seems to be seeking to learn from his past rather than to beat himself up for it. He was young and foolish then, but he'll do better now. |
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| Vampire Weekend – Taxi Cab Lyrics | 2 years ago |
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I love this song. It took a few years to grow on me, but it is now definitely my favourite out of all the ones they've done. I think the song's about looking back on a relationship that floundered not so much on the social class divide between the narrator and his former girlfriend, but on his younger self's affectations about it at the time. He fell for a rich girl, but due to his cool bohemian/leftist identity convinced himself that he was repulsed by the lavish world she came from and that therefore they couldn't be together. This ultimately came from a place of insecurity, and now that he's older and "sure of himself" he can see he was "never fair" to her on this. "Compound to compound, lazy and safe" refers (IMO) to how rich people like her often take taxis everywhere, chauffeuring them from plush apartment to country club to expensive restaurant, each one a pleasant but isolated location guarded by staff. By doing this they stay inside their social bubble, without ever dealing with ordinary life and ordinary people in between. It is literally lazy because you're being driven exactly where you need to go by someone else; you don't need to drive yourself or walk to a bus or train stop, things someone who can't afford to take taxis everywhere might have to do. It is also intellectually lazy because you don't have to face any of the social problems & dangers that exist outside of that rich person's bubble - and it is safe for the exact same reason. You can easily imagine someone in that world "wanting to leave it" and face the real world, either out of either moral outrage or of a sense of adventure, but also "wanting to wait" because life is so much easier inside it. "When the taxi doors opened wide, I pretended I was horrified, by the uniformed clothes outside, and the courtyard gate" refers to the narrator's feigned attitude of repulsion to this privileged world of hers, with it's uniformed staff and the gates to keep other people out - yet looking back he can see he was just pretending to hate it to seem cool, even to himself. Again he felt he was 'supposed' to hate the world she came from, but didn't pay enough attention to his personal feelings for her as a result. He ignored the closeness and things they did together on an entirely equal basis, like shopping in "the aisles of the grocery", to focus on little things that showed how she was different from him, trappings of wealth like her "mother's hair" or "the colours that [her] father wears", or that one time she spoke to him like a "real aristocrat". He allowed this to spoil the relationship, and now realises that he "was never fair, [she] was always fine". Interestingly I think this might be about the same relationship as the one in 'I Think Ur a Contra'. In both songs he is making a personal relationship about big political things and screwing it up as a result. I think this may well be autobiographical: Ezra Keonig went to an elite Ivy League university (Cornell) but was from a modest background himself, becoming a school teacher after graduation until his band took off. Cornell is just the sort of place where he could have met and dated a girl who was from a much richer background than him, and be introduced to that world by her. And being highly educated but emotionally inexperienced at that stage of his life, it would have been easy for him to project the big political issues he'd learned about onto personal relationships where they didn't belong, and get preachy. There's also of course, a reference throughout the album that neatly combines issues of social class with rock&roll in a way that no doubt really appealed to Ezra - the British band The Clash. Big in the late 1970s & early 1980s, this band was all about being cool and the being on the side of the working class fighting The Establishment, at a time of huge class conflict in Britain (with the Winter of Discontent & the rise of Thatcherism). However, in reality the band's frontman Joe Strummer was far from the working class rebel he presented himself as, being the son of a diplomat (or a "Diplomat's Son"). The Clash released an album called 'Sandinista!' in 1980, named after the Marxist rebels who had recently overthrown the conservative Samoza dictatorship in Nicaragua at the time and were being fought by the CIA-funded 'Contras'. This was exactly the sort of struggle between cool leftist rebels and right wing forces of class disparity and unfairness that appealed to guys like Strummer, determined as he was to run away from his own rather elite background. So when Ezra accuses the girl in the song of being a 'Contra' he's dismissing her as a creature of privilege, who's content to support an unfair status quo that benefits her. Her desire for "Rock and roll, complete control" (another Clash song) is invalidated by her conservative desire for "good schools and friends with pools". Again he is being posey and judgey, and slotting a person he has a deep personal connection with into a simplistic political position. Only later, older and wiser, does he realise how dumb he was: people don't fit into neat boxes, part of one "side" or the other like some far off civil war, and he was wrong to try to force her to "choose between two" when really he "just wanted [her]". While the songs are regretful, the tone isn't too self-flagellating: Ezra is looking back, but seems to be seeking to learn from his past rather than to beat himself up for it. He was young and foolish then, but he'll do better now. |
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| Gorillaz – Pirate Jet Lyrics | 15 years ago |
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Surely the taps running for a hundred years are the oil pumps, fueling the modern, plastic world we've created since the early twentieth century, when it became our main fuel source (plastic of course, being derived from oil). I'm not sure if the song is optimistic so much as nihilistic - that perhaps it's already too late to really do much about global warming, soil degradation, oil shortages, over-fishing and pollution so we can and should all stop worrying about it and enjoy the (toxic) fruits of our plastic world before it all falls apart and the nature we've despoiled and corrupted revenges itself upon humanity. So we may as well drink from the plastic cup [the poisoned chalice?] now while we still can - we've already binged on oil via our fun fast cars, our cheap, superficially-clean electricity, our speeding jet planes (pirate or otherwise), our effortlessly microwaved mass-produced ready-meals and of course our fun disposable (but sadly extremely durable) plastic goods, so much so that we're now beyond salvation. Drugs, alcohol, gambling and bad, addictive relationships can all be seen both as symbols and, perhaps, as symptoms of the unnatural, superficially fun but somehow soulless existence we now lead in the modern world, wrapped-up in our plastic civilisation, knowing it's not sustainable but refusing to change our behaviour - just like any other kind of addict. So drinking from the plastic cup is both a metaphor and a literal action - party now to forget the future consequences. And because deep-down, many people feel this to be true, between periods of shallow, frantic fun the album is suffused by a sense of unease and mournfulness. For me, the whole thing is a kind of a requiem for the doomed modern world. But perhaps things are not quite so bad - perhaps we will be 'forgiven' as it were, for our crimes against the planet. But maybe we never will. This is not my real-life view of the world - at least not my logical one. But on an emotional level I do agree with a lot of what I draw from this song, and album. Feel free to comment away: |
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| Blur – Caramel Lyrics | 17 years ago |
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Damon seems very depressed in this song, so it probably is about his breakup with Justine. He may be referring to trying to get over his depression when he says "I've got to get better", and it sounds like he is suffering from writer's block due to being so miserable - hence "I've got to find genius". As for the "Light, Day!" bit at the end, perhaps this is the metaphorical "light at the end of the tunnel" for him. |
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| Blur – Swamp Song Lyrics | 17 years ago |
| Justine mixed liberally with heroin I think. That he's got drugs and love mixed up with each other is a little twisted, but then that's rock'n'roll for you. I think it was supposedly heroin that led to their break-up, so that figures. | |
| Counting Crows – Colorblind Lyrics | 17 years ago |
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For a long time I assumed this song was about love as that is the theme of the sex scene it was used for in Cruel Intentions. However, I am now sure it is actually about depression. 'Colorblind' refers to how everything seems grey and colourless when you're depressed, 'pull me out from inside' is a plea for someone to rescue them from their thoughts. But talking becomes virtually impossible - 'tongue-tied' so this doesn't ever happen. It can feel like you're eyes etc are 'covered in skin' because nothing - and no-one - can really penetrates the lethargy and misery. But usually the depressed person won't admit any of this - they just say "I am fine". The lyricist probably had depression at some point, the wrote the song about it. Glad he did, it rocks. |
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| Regina Spektor – That Time Lyrics | 17 years ago |
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It does seem light and frivolous, about a fun but confusing time in life. But it also seems a bit obsessive: only reading cereal boxes (or even Shakespeare) for a month is an odd thing to do, ditto eating tangerines. I feel this darker streak - of getting obsessed by things - is just as constant as the playfulness, so the last verse is not so much of a shock for me. And I'm not entirely sure he died at the end. |
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| Blur – This Is a Low Lyrics | 18 years ago |
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My guess is Damon was experiencing a heroin low at the time, and that is why it didn't seem odd to write a song about the shipping forecast. I expect he was listening to the voice on the radio as a comfort thing. I guess it's shows his skill as a song writer that it ended up as good as it did. |
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